


The Anthony Crowley Affair

by UlsPi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Depression, Disability, Jewish Good Omens (Good Omens), Love at First Sight, M/M, Meant To Be, Neurodiversity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlsPi/pseuds/UlsPi
Summary: Ezra smiled like a very drunk sun. He wanted to tell Crowley to take him back with him. He felt the world spinning, he felt the pull of the moon on the evening waters, he was a prophet and a scientist and a poet, and most of all, he, an aging, soft insurance investigator, was a lover.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 59
Collections: Good Omens is Jewish and so are we





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [natalunasans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalunasans/gifts).

> This is by far the strangest thing I've ever written. Would love to know your thoughts. Also, pay attention, depression is mentioned and it sucks, and I do understand that the way it's treated here might suggest that it's easily curable, but I know it's not. What Ezra suggests is a company in that dark place.

If letters could sway like they do when gentle reader has one drink too many, then gentle reader, in case they kept on reading aided by the second extra drink, would get the perfect impression of the way Anthony Crowley's hips moved. The market swayed in time with him, he was the demon of the London stock exchange, unbelievably rich, infernally clever with his investments, dressed in the tightest and finest black, with constantly present sunglasses which, as everyone suspected and probably not without a reason, he used as a cover for his many naps during business meetings. According to Anthony Crowley's interview to GQ, his hobbies included, but were in no way limited to, freediving, sports cars and (addendum from Crowley's interview to Esquire) exotic plants and (addendum from another interview, to Playboy) Renaissance art. According to all those publications Crowley's social life was busy and buzzing and his lovelife, a guarded secret. He proudly stated that he was gay and in the privacy of his spacious penthouse, he would add to his shahows that he was waiting for the love of his life. Had those shadows given interviews of their own, they would have told that Anthony Crowley took fierce care of his exotic plants by the way of yelling at them (and on one occasion crooning cruelly to a particularly stubborn kokedama that "never mind I'll find someone like you, I will personally put you through the shredder, yeah, don't forget me, I beg, I'll remember your sad and wilting leaves and it'll still hurt me less"), had an impressive collection of Dürers and Rembrandts and Van Eycks (Italian Renaissance was too bright for his tastes) and was an anonymous patron of countless charities, mostly those that helped children. His only attempt to actually show up for the kids he had helped resulted in a nervous breakdown and doubling of his generous donations. 

Crowley saw suffering, especially that of children, as a major design flaw of the creation. Oh, he could understand a bit of pining here and there, some minor disturbances and inconveniences, but crime, cancer and cruelty had always remained beyond his understanding despite the fact that he tended to feel the others' suffering more acutely than his own. How could Crowley suffer? He was rich, privileged, he owned the world, and if he was depressed through it all, well, that was another design flaw he'd discuss with the Almighty in his prayers. Anthony Crowley had a therapist, of course, although his PA Lord Bea (an actual aristocrat, mind you) would attend those meetings for their boss. Don't ask, it's rather ineffable. 

When Anthony Crowley was particularly depressed, Lord Bea would mention it to the therapist, who was old and wise and not very ethical and treated Mafia bosses. She would casually recommend something, Lord Bea would casually sneak it to their own boss, who might have had a hand in capturing some Mafia bosses, but don't tell anyone. Depression episodes would usually be followed by those of aching boredom and as a consequence, fits of risky deals (always successful) and days spent in adrenaline infusing activities.

On an absolutely unrelated note, one day in February the original print of Dürer's  _ Melancholia I  _ was stolen from the exhibition in the British museum. That day Anthony Crowley strolled into the museum (an anonymous patron of which he had been for years, as well as of several groups trying to get the museum to return the exhibits that had been the spoils of war). He was just admiring the artworks and minding his own business, when a group of armed men reenacted  _ Mission impossible  _ and tried to steal something. For all their badassery, the men couldn't make it past their impressive entrance that was mistaken for a modern art happening, and were immediately detained. While the public chattered, the print was stolen, and Anthony Crowley, completely unaware of it, strolled out of the museum and asked his driver to take him to the Ritz where he ordered an impressive meal and ate nothing. He had the meal packed and back in his penthouse put it into the fridge, full of similar packages in different stages of decay. (Once a month Lord Bea would go into their raging aristocrat mode and banish the decay.)

(If the laws of continuity and story-telling demand that I pick up from the place where Anthony Crowley returned to his flat to sing Adele to his plants and stare at his collection of Renaissance art, then screw them laws, because Lord Bea deserves to be told about. Lord Bea was an heir to a miraculously big fortune and a family castle, miraculously still belonging to the family of Lord Bea. 

Lord Bea would never live up to any expectations. They excelled in Cambridge, met Crowley there and found in him a protective friend and a mission in life which turned out to be keeping that disaster from turning into apocalypse. They were perpetually bored, they had everything anyone could ever wish for and what they lacked in their life was taking care of someone with the fierceness of a Jewish grandmother. Of course one day Lord Bea would take over their lordly duties from their lady mothers but for now, they wanted to keep their friend from trouble. They would never let Crowley know that, or he'd get some mad ideas like discouraging Lord Bea from that mission. As things stood, Lord Bea was in charge of all those charities Crowley anonymously supported and Crowley trusted their judgment. Only an idiot wouldn't trust the embodiment of nobility in every sense of the word that was Lord Bea. That's it, and that's much less than Lord Bea deserves.)

The badass men turned out to be immigrants, and somehow they had received their citizenship and generous payment precisely on the day of their failed heist. Suddenly they had the most fearsome lawyers in town representing them pro bono, which of course was just a coincidence. The insurance company would have nothing of anything and just wanted to avoid paying a fat sum to a museum, so a few days after the successful and rather mysterious heist, a handsome blond man in a handsome white suit that seemed eerily out of place and time, walked into the office of DI Gabriel and smiled at him brightly.

"Good day, inspector. My name is Ezra Fell, and I understand that you have been informed of my arrival."

"Aren't you soft for an investigator?" Asked DI Gabriel who knew no temple other than his fitness club and no god but himself. Ezra Fell smiled even more brightly.

"I enjoy the fine things in life, inspector, be it books, music or good food and even better wine. I doubt you'd understand. I was asked to help you so I'm here to offer you my soft insight and proceed with my investigation."

"Insight? Who'd pay for your insight?"

"A group of Swiss gentlemen who have questionable morals but impeccable financial record." 

"Just out of curiosity, how much do you get for your insights?"

Ezra Fell smiled so brightly several lightbulbs around the building might have died a spectacular death of a star. "My dear inspector, I make enough to buy you, your hide and your fitness club so many times over you'll have to be on your knees and clean their floors with that naughty tongue of yours before they let you back in. What's better, I might simply be polite and pleasant, and still, you'll have to be on your knees and cleaning their floors with your tongue before they let you back in." 

DI Gabriel considered his exercise routine the finest thing in life, and there was something unnerving in the way the man he had insulted kept smiling at him, while his blue, clear, clever, mischievous eyes were fixed on DI Gabriel mercilessly and as if he had not seen DI Gabriel as anything other than a group of muscles or a badly written book he wouldn't care to open. 

"You know, inspector, many a man has insulted me, and many a man has been thoroughly humiliated by me… You will insult me and I will not care, so you'll insult me more, and I will not care still… and then I will get my ten million pounds and you will find yourself demoted."

(A bookish gay Jewish boy who had been mocked by his peers and neighbours in his gentile neighbourhood, had spent many a night rehearsing that speech and got significantly more confident over the years as his threats came to life, because the Almighty loved him and his mother loved him even more, because the Swiss gentlemen with questionable morals and impeccable financial record were themselves soft and delighted at the sight of their overconfident classmates crawling to them for loans. Some part of that bookish gay Jewish man was hurt and doubted every step he had made and every word he had uttered, but DI Gabriel hadn't expected such conduct, no bully ever does, and as of the moment, Ezra Fell in his expensive clothes and with an antique watch in his pocket held more power over the bully, and behold, it was good, and what's even better, just.)

"I reside in South Downs, dear inspector, and before I dared disturb your undeserved peace of what you call mind, I did my research. Now, are you interested in my insight or not?"

"I obviously am," replied DI Gabriel, dying inside.

"You are such a dear. So, the most prominent buyer of all things concerning Northern Renaissance in the last twenty years has been Anthony Crowley, and you know what's the defining feature of Anthony Crowley?"

"He's a billionaire?"

"He's elegant. Now, this heist was nothing but elegant, and amazingly so."

"You seem to admire the man."

"And you don't. Nothing has ever come of underestimating your enemies but misery and defeat. If you had read a book or two in your life, you'd know it."

"I've read a book."

"Oh, I'm sure. Don't want to traumatise my mind with the title, so don't share, please. Anyway, Anthony Crowley is a very rich man who burns sports cars for kicks. This crime, it was for kicks. Otherwise my contacts in the least savoury parts of the world would have informed me of someone trying to sell a Dürer, since I'd be more than interested in buying it."

DI Gabriel wasn't an eloquent man, and Ezra Fell rendered him overall speechless.

"Would you care to pay the man a visit? Or should I steal your glory?"

"Yeah… let's… kick his ass."

"Oh dear. For all his riches, the man couldn't buy himself an ass worth kicking even if he cared to do so. I can't help being upset with your involvement but I was asked so nicely to help you."

"Really?"

"Really. Your supervisor is a dear friend. All of your supervisors are dear friends, by the way."

DI Gabriel swallowed nervously. He could never think or understand that just by the virtue of being kind and polite, Ezra Fell had a world full of dear friends.

***

Anthony Crowley began his day by spilling a canister of petrol over the parking area behind his office building, that he had cleared of all the cars for the occasion, proceeded by dropping a burning cigarette into it and driving his vintage Bentley through the resulting fire. Lord Bea stood in the barely safe distance from that madness and held a cup of spirulina drink. Ezra Fell and DI Gabriel joined them, Ezra in shock and DI Gabriel in envious admiration which he would never admit to. Finally, just as the firefighters arrived, Crowley stopped the car, got out of it, his face covered in soot and with a grin shining through it and copper hair on fire, but the eternal one, the one the burning bush was carrying over to Moses, and said, "You won't get that sort of performance from a modern car!" and swayed over to where Lord Bea was waiting for him, unimpressed and vaguely proud. His yellow eyes with mismatched pupils slid over DI Gabriel and fixed Ezra Fell with a single glance, then moved over, unwillingly, to Lord Bea.

"Good morning. Your lordship, I'm not drinking this."

Their lordship raised their unoccupied hand and flashed a rolled cigarette in front of Crowley's face.

"I guess you want your cigarette, junkie."

"You guess correctly, your fucking lordship." Crowley downed the green stuff in one gulp, took a tissue from Lord Bea to wipe his lips and lit his cigarette. Behind him the firefighters were doing their job with such casual expressions on their faces, that one would be right to think that the occasion hadn't been the first or even the tenth.

"These gentle male-shaped humanoids wanted to have a few words with you, and one of them is a policeperson." Lord Bea informed wiping the soot from Crowley's cheeks with tender displeasure. Introductions were made, explanations of the visit was given in the vaguest possible manner.

"Ok, let's ehm… go upstairs?" Crowley offered. DI Gabriel tried immediately following him, but was shoved away first by Crowley, then by Lord Bea. Both appeared to have done it on purpose and ignored it just as purposefully.

On their way they saw no person in formal clothes, encountered no doorway the size of which DI Gabriel was used to, and were passed by several people in electric wheelchairs. 

"What's this about?" Cursed DI Gabriel in the elevator.

"What?" Crowley asked, interrupted in his lively Sign conversation with a dark-haired Deaf woman while half-gazing at entirely oblivious and unperturbed Ezra Fell. The woman had snapped her fingers in front of Crowley's face several times and in the end just rolled her eyes and laughed. 

"What's with pulling faces?" Continued DI Gabriel. Ezra looked at him in disgust and signed an apology to the woman. She signed back at him that he was cute and that her boss had eyes for him and that his companion was an arsehole. Crowley interrupted them and furiously signed that he didn't have eyes for anyone, that nobody in his building had any right to be cute or nice or any other four letter words and that he would not stand for that kind of language. Lord Bea reminded the woman that she had missed her floor. The woman sent Lord Bea to hell with a cheeky sign and stepped out of the elevator.

"That was my director of operations," said Crowley with the unease of someone who had just unleashed the Kraken. "You pissed her off, she will destroy several lives today, but with good reason, I guess."

"Anathema always has reasons," defended Lord Bea. 

"Why are your doors so big?" DI Gabriel didn't know when to stop.

"Because there are people who need bigger doors," shrugged Crowley. "We are too big for small doors!" He proclaimed.

"Here comes your first stupid sentence of the day," condemned Lord Bea. 

They stepped out of the elevator on the top floor and walked past a few people DI Gabriel would never notice had he not encountered them among the senior management of a powerful company. He had actually mocked such people in his young arsehole days, those moving slowly and having trouble with eye contact, those dressing in "wrong" clothes and loving "wrong" people, but now he had to make way for them, they had no time for his shit, they had a business to run and a boss who had their carpark evacuated somewhere to burn a vintage Bentley out of boredom. They had no time for him either, which Crowley respected and found reasonable.

***

In his preposterously kitsch chair that strove to be perceived as a throne and instead looked thoroughly ridiculous, Crowley looked the fools' king, but the "fools" for all their grumpy looks loved their king, who wasn't usually whether he was a king or a queen, yet there he was, the monarch, the Rex/Regina with copper hair and golden eyes, with stupidly long limbs and faux nonchalance all over his sharp face… Ezra Fell was staring at the wall behind Crowley. The wall had on it many pictures of the company's diverse staff on pride parades, on their kids' bar/bat mitzvot, laughing, having huge corporate picnics, senior management storming Disneyland, the accounting chess match against Crowley's invincible head of said accounting in a wheelchair… Each picture had a story written under it and in short the whole wall was a big sappy family album. 

Ezra Fell looked at the monarch, smiled like a million giddy suns and said, "This place… it feels… loved. Not a very corporate feeling, isn't it?"

"This place feels weird." DI Gabriel didn't know what was good for him. 

"Lordship, take the arsehole out of the building," demanded Crowley and Ezra smiled again.

"My dear, I do agree with your judgment but I'm afraid as a member of the police he might turn out to be useful… on the other hand…" Ezra looked at the pictures, looked at Crowley, looked at DI Gabriel and made a decision. "Yes, I quite agree."

(Nobody had seen DI Gabriel again. There were rumours Anthony Crowley bought him an island and sent him there to spend his days in the sun with an impressive library of queer studies.)

"So, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?" Asked Crowley.

"I rather think I was misled in my conclusions, Mr Crowley," replied Ezra. 

"What, you thought I stole that Dürer?" Crowley smiled too smugly for someone law-abiding. 

"You've been buying every Dürer on the market…"

"Buying is legal."

"My dear, you have just burnt your car. You freedive where nobody should… it was rather foolish of me to suspect you, of all people, of stealing  _ Melancholia.  _ Why would you know a thing about such a dreadful subject?"

Crowley nervously swallowed.

"Are you implying that I'm depressed?" Asked Crowley menacingly (he was as menacing as a kitten and just as pretty).

"On the contrary! Why would a man like you be depressed?" Ezra tilted his head attentively.

(This story is a mess of a narrative and probably shouldn't be told, but I don't do should and should doesn't do me, we've never met before and intend to remain far from each other, therefore I'll do anything and everything and in equal proportions. Thank you.)

"Precisely. Undepressable, that's what I am!" Said Crowley defiantly.

"Who would ever suggest otherwise?" Ezra smiled, something sad and caring in the line of his lips. "I'm so sorry to have taken so much of your time and all for the wrong reasons and in the wrong company… We really should have met differently, my dear."

Crowley had nothing else to swallow, and Lord Bea suddenly brought him another green drink and some tea for Ezra. Crowley absent-mindedly downed the drink. 

"Good, made you eat spinach!" Lord Bea was proud of themselves. 

"How very cruel of you," reproached Ezra, and Lord Bea felt ashamed for the first time in their life. 

"Mr Fell, if that's all, I suggest you leave," said Crowley, his voice broken.

"That's all, my dear. So sorry to have inconvenienced you."

"It's alright. You did your job."

"I did it poorly. May I… take you out for lunch as an apology for my behaviour?"

"What's for lunch?"

"What would you say to some crepes? How about I'll take you to Paris to my favourite crêperie on Sunday?"

***

Ezra took a train back to South Downs. As soon as he arrived, he opened his safe and took out a rare reprint of  _ Melancholia,  _ a twin of the one stolen. Ezra gently caressed the protective glass sheltering the perfect gloom of the engraving from air and light. "Now, we can't let that lovely boy go to prison for his foolish conduct, can we?" He asked the melancholic lady on the print. 

Ezra called his Swiss bosses and told them the print was safe and in his possession.

"And the thief?" They asked.

"The thief is fine. Very sweet, very cooperative. We have no interest in their fate, do we?"

"They can go to hell, to prison or to the Maldives for all we care. Your payment is being transferred. Good job, Ezra, as usual."

"Why, thank you. You are so kind."

"Get the piece back to the museum, if it's not too much trouble."

"I will, of course."

***

It was a lovely evening, and Ezra was planning his day with Crowley. He was planning it meticulously, he wanted to make the man deliriously happy with something safe and soft. He wanted to cradle that sharp face in his careful, scholarly fingers, he wanted to protect him. The feeling was so intense, it scared Ezra for ten minutes, and then, the hedonist that he was, he rejoiced in it, because it lit something within him, something sparkling, dizzying, something he had never known he possessed. His life took a whole new look, turned differently, and where he used to see comforting completion and utter contentment, he saw a halved globe, a theory as flawed as the Ptolemaic one, and just like the Ptolemaic one, it had its short-sighted values that had only waited for Copernicus to ruin and fix it. 

His phone rang.

"Hello?"

"What the fuck have you fucking done?"

"Mr Crowley?"

"Don't talk to me like that! What have you done!?"

"I will be more comfortable talking about this in person."

"Yeah, I suspected as much. I'm outside your gate, open."

Ezra's worldview of his own heart made a leap from the Ptolemaic straight into the quantum. He was elated and distressed, enchanted by that rudeness and repulsed by it.

"Please, open the gate."

"Of course, my dear."

Crowley jumped out of his car and sauntered to Ezra's door. 

"What have you done?"

"Would you like to come in?"

"Ezra, please!"

"I gave away my own print. I have a rather good collection of Northern Renaissance artworks myself and had a twin of the one you stole, so I returned it to where it belonged."

"Why?"

"Because however hard you try to prove otherwise, you don't deserve to be punished, my dear."

"Oh really? And who are you to judge?"

"Why, that's the point, my dear boy! I'm not judging you. No one is."

"I stole…"

"And you built heaven on Earth for all those people in your company who wouldn't have had their comfortable, happy lives had you not come their way."

"Don't do this. I can't be… fixed like that."

"There is nothing to fix. I think you are perfectly fine, but you need… some crepes, good time, a loving friend."

"You fucking own me now!"

"It wasn't my intent. (The author needs to squeeze their authorship here and insist that although it wasn't Ezra's intent, he'd rather like to own Crowley.) I wanted you to… to get away with your mischief. Who doesn't want a little mischief every now and then?"

Crowley was biting his lip, his eyes hidden and his entire frame shaking.

"My dear, look, I was just planning our Sunday in Paris. Let me cancel that. If you ever want to see me again, you know where to find me."

"I want to see you again," replied Crowley quietly. "I just can't get why you want to see me. I'm a thief. I'm an adrenaline junkie. I'm a show-off!"

"Dear, sweet boy," Ezra gave in and cradled Crowley's face with his hands, "you are in no state to have a discussion about it now. You won't believe me anyway, it will only make you angrier. Go back to your work, to the people who love you, and if you ever want me again, I'll be here."

"You are a fucking angel, it really bothers me. Let's do those crepes on Sunday."

Ezra smiled like a very drunk sun. He wanted to tell Crowley to take him back with him. He felt the world spinning, he felt the pull of the moon on the evening waters, he was a prophet and a scientist and a poet, and most of all, he, an aging, soft insurance investigator, was a lover. 

Throughout the world there are countless myths of people being made from clay. Ezra's G-d, that of Abraham and Sara, created Adam as a golem from dust and breathed life into him. But clay was fragile, pudgy, raw without fire. 

Prometheus made people from clay, Prometheus brought them fire so that his fragile children would get warm by it, cook on it and read by its light. Crowley was Ezra's fire. Crowley was Ezra's king. Crowley was a lonely, lost, depressed man who made everyone's lives better and considered himself unworthy of the same. Crowley was fire searching for clay, and their essences chimed and rhymed. 

"Let's have lunch now," demanded Crowley. "Won't wait for Sunday."

"Oh my darling boy, by all means. Let me grab my coat. What would you like to eat?"

***

"My dear, you haven't touched your food."

"I know, I'm not blind."

"You are still bothered. You shouldn't."

"Ezra, we've been having these lunches for a few months now. You should have figured out that I barely eat and will never stop being bothered."

"Anthony, do you spend time with me because you are afraid of me?"

"I spend time with you because you see me through, all shit, my privilege, my wealth, my fucked up mind, and still want to spend time with me. I like that you see me."

"I like seeing you, my dear boy."

"You must know that it can't be fixed with friendships, crepes and wine."

"Of course, my dear, but fixing you isn't my intention, besides there's nothing to fix."

"So… what is it we are doing?"

"We are having lunch, my dear, like we have been doing for several months now, as you pointed out."

"Yes, but what's your purpose, angel?" It didn't sound like an endearment, more like a statement of a fact, and quite dry at it too.

"You said you were glad I saw you, but you didn't get what I see right. It seems you wouldn't want to be showered in compliments, so… I'm allowing myself to shower you in… affection. See, something changed when we met, something shifted, imperceptibly but undoubtedly."

(For Crowley the shift was just as obvious but he feared it. He managed things his entire life, arranged things the way he wanted them to be, yet never considered it necessary to arrange things for himself. He thought that if he built his perfect world, he'd feel differently, but still, in his perfect corporate kingdom he felt just as flawed, as depressed, as melancholic as he had before. Maybe it was impossible to build such kingdom within on his own, but that was a sad thought.)

"I see it as basic chemistry, my dear, as first steps to the creation of life from the mud. You changed me, changed the way I see, and I see everything as you. It's so clear to me, I don't even think how stupid and pretentious it must sound to you, because to me it became divinely true." Ezra smiled, put the stars to shame, wove his fingers through Crowley's. "Yet I understand that in the world, the one around me, I still have to win your trust."

"Are you courting me, angel?"

"I'm not, my dear. For all my madness, I'm not brave enough, wasn't brave enough to tell this to you a few months ago, I selfishly wanted to spend time with you, and you didn't seem to mind. Have I misread something?"

"You haven't, no," replied Crowley, mouth dry, his whole body suddenly dry and aching. "It's just… our conversations have seemed pointless to me in the sense that there's something we both know, both see and feel and refuse to acknowledge. Like… when we did go to Paris and spent most of the trip in silence, it felt… old, ancient even, and right. When you came by my office and took me out for lunch, we talked for hours, but it appeared… it was… like catching up. We know each other, somehow. We fit. I'm not a mystic enough to just accept it, you know."

"I'm not either, but it's intense, so intense, I'd be a fool to refuse it my trust. Would you share this mystical madness with me, my dear?"

"Please."

"Please what, darling boy?"

"Please, let me in, I will share it with you."

"Good. Shall we go home, then?"


	2. Chapter 2

"You know what the biggest problem with our madness is, angel?" Asked Crowley on their drive somewhere. Since we are here talking about madness, it really is of no importance where they were heading, but alright, they were heading to the Maggiore. Crowley had rented a villa there for several reasons. 

First, they needed to talk. 

Second, Crowley was obnoxiously rich and sometimes liked acting like someone obnoxiously rich.

Third, Ezra was rich and loved his luxury.

Fourth, it seemed like something straight out of some novella by Hermann Hesse and neither Crowley, nor Ezra wanted to refuse themselves the pleasure of a vague Hesse-esque experience. 

In short, their reasons, apart from the fist one, were absolutely dumb.

"And what is it, my dear?"

"We don't talk, and alright, I know, when we do talk, we agree, so it's much more pleasant to return to bickering and teasing…"

"Wait, wait, wait, darling. You think that talking and bickering are different?"

"Yes, sure. How come you don't get it?"

"Apparently I'm not as clever as I thought, or we have found something we disagree about. Do enlighten me, Anthony." Ezra smiled feeling warm and calm in Crowley's company. 

"So, ehm… when we bicker, and I only mean us, you and me, we sort of… Wilde each other out, you know? We enjoy our conversations for their own sakes. When we talk, we actually learn something about each other, which usually leads us to a conclusion that our madness is not madness at all, it makes perfect sense that we are mad about each other. How is my ars amandi going?"

"Spectacular, keep going, my love."

"I'm afraid I've answered your question."

"You should be afraid, because I'd love to listen some more," Ezra laughed, leaned carefully and pressed a kiss to Crowley's cheek.

"We should have taken the train, angel."

"We shouldn't have, my dear. We would have been snogging… is snogging akin to talking or to bickering?"

"Are tongues involved?" Asked Crowley risking a glance at Ezra.

"Definitely, it's snogging."

"Right… semantics!" Crowley shook his head in false displeasure.

"Isn't this whole conversation about semantics, my dear?"

"Well, it is. By the way, as it usually happens with us, we were talking and then moved to bickering."

"Does it bother you?" Ezra frowned.

"No! No, absolutely not! It's just that… we are calling it madness, because we… sort of…"

"I love it when you are looking for a word," Ezra tucked a lock of Crowley's hair behind his ear lovingly.

"See, this. I don't like clichés, angel, but it seems… like… oy gewalt! Nuh! We knew each other, instantly. Isn't it stupid?"

"Well, my dear, I wouldn't be as clever as I am, if I didn't indulge in stupidity every now and then. I dare say that it definitely must be a sign of a well developed intellect, to be able to behave stupidly sometimes."

"According to their fucking lordship, I'm mostly stupid."

"Sweetheart, their lordship has gone strict Jewish mother on you, no, grandmother, but I hope you know they love you to the moon and back."

They laughed together and held hands like two stupid clever people they were. To make matters worse, they spent their entire drive to the channel like that.

"Was stupid, definitely," admitted Crowley when they settled the car transportation and walked to the upper deck to get cold.

"So what? The wind is playing with your hair, and we'll drive afterwards, just the two of us, which was the whole point of our trip, wasn't it?"

"It was, angel," replied Crowley softening. He wrapped himself around Ezra protectively, so in the end the only person to get cold was Crowley, which gave Ezra a wonderful opportunity to coo all over him.

"I want to return to our earlier conversation," asked Ezra rubbing Crowley's ears to warm them.

"Then leave my ears in peace!"

"I will not," Ezra bit Crowley's ear and thus made the man blush. 

"Wh… what did… our earlier conversation?"

"Yes, my sweet mumbling love. How does it matter whether we talk or bicker?"

"I don't know for sure, but if we are mad, then we must be serious about it and remain serious within our madness, and to be honest, I just love talking rubbish with you."

"I guessed so. The feeling is mutual, obviously."

"Obviously," mocked back Crowley.

"Mock me all you want, you are happy, Anthony."

"Oh, I'm silly with happiness." Crowley grinned like an idiot.

"And do I have anything to do with that happiness?" Ezra pouted.

"You have everything to do with it, daft angel."

"So, we established that our happiness makes us silly, that we totally spoil each other with this silliness, and I think I'm speaking for the both of us when I say neither of us wants it to stop. Correct?"

"So correct, angel!"

"Then what are we talking about?"

"We are talking about the nature of our madness!" Crowley took a sharp turn and Ezra frowned at him, lovingly.

"The nature of our madness is love, my dear."

"And? We are taking a risk here, you know?"

"I'm taking a risk each time I sit in your car, and I wouldn't want to sit in any other car. It's… ineffable."

"We are ineffable?"

"I don't know. I have definitely developed an ineffable streak since we're together."

"You once talked about mud and fire… I'm sure you explained it to me but I'd forgotten."

"Clay and fire, darling. You made me into something much more… exquisite than I used to be. Something true, genuine. Of course I have thought many times about all the things that were and maybe still are wrong with me, but when we met, everything felt right, chemically, because you see, being anything else, being different I wouldn't fit so well with you and what's the point then?"

"But it ties you with me, and… doesn't it take your free will away?"

"It doesn't. Unlike a molecule I can change a lot about myself, but I don't want to change a thing about either of us because we work like this, as we are."

"So, it's not ineffable then, angel, it's elective affinities."

"I trust you, sweetheart, to find justification of our togetherness in Goethe."

"Although in his case, elective affinities went down like a lead balloon."

"Because they didn't listen to their… inner science."

"But you can't change your inner science!"

"No, but you can change the way you express it. You can deny yourself something essential and insist on living differently out of many different reasons, you might even be happy in the end, but never like this, never like us. We bicker, my love, and we might have been talking all the time. I don't need to talk to you, to have long conversations about our worldviews and tastes in wine. I… know it all, because my inner science and yours, they are the same, no, better, they rhyme, they fit."

"So… like… I'm milk in your tea and lox on your bagel?" Asked Crowley.

"Love, you are hungry."

"Why hungry, angel? Perhaps I'm horny."

"You're hungry, my dear, and you are insufferable when you are hungry. Cookie?"

"What, you brought cookies?"

"Sure. In case we got peckish."

"Peckish?"

"See, I was right, insufferable. Open up!"

Crowley sighed and opened his mouth to accept the cookie.

***

"But does it mean that we spend the rest of our lives talking nonsense?"

Ezra smiled in the dark, thus banishing the night to Australia. "I see nothing wrong with it. You?"

"No, neither do I, but I never thought that it might be like that. I imagined something more solemn, you know?"

"Solemn, my dear, you?"

"Why, you think I can't be solemn?"

"Darling, a few minutes ago you bubbled such sweet nonsense that I really can't imagine you solemn, but give me a year or two… Will you, love?"

"What, angel?"

"Will you give me a year or two?"

"Angel, you have all the years of my life, I'm rather curious about the depths of ridiculousness that we may discover… angel, now you are solemn. I don't want you to be solemn, I used to think that love is solemn."

"Love is funny, my dear, at least ours is, and I've come to the conclusion that I don't want any other love… is that not enough?"

"How have I managed to upset you with my idiocy?"

"Maybe it's my own idiocy. Maybe I'm just a buffoon, and you are…"

"No, angel, listen, I'm not saying something is wrong. On the contrary, everything is so wonderful that I guess I'm trying to discover what this wonder is made of, but in the end, it's just us. It's made of you and me, and yes, it's funny and ridiculous and we will spend a good chunk of our lives laughing at it and wondering at it. I'm not regretting a thing, angel. I'd steal more only to have you in the end."

"Well, you most certainly stole me."

"See? And now I whisked you away to a villa by the lake. Romantic, stupid and wonderful. It would have been just as wonderful anywhere else in the world."

"Anthony?"

"Yes, angel?"

"I love you."

"I love you too, angel."

"Let's talk some more, please."

"Sure. What about?"

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Kudos and comments are my kink.


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